Most businesses and organizations depend and rely upon various types of data for performing their operations. Typical business data include manufacturing operations data, manufacturing equipment data, manufacturing process data, research and development data, business financial data, financial transactions data, booking and reservations data, sales and marketing data, customer records, member or client specific records, legal, administrative and personnel related data and security data, among others. These data are usually stored in storage devices including servers, magnetic storage devices, optical storage devices, or paper documents.
Data loss or interruption in the availability of the data for a period of time pose a significant risk in the operation of any business or organization. The process, policies and procedures of restoring operations critical to the resumption of business is called business continuity. A subset of business continuity is disaster recovery (DR). Disaster recovery includes regaining access to data (records, hardware, software, among others), communications (incoming, outgoing, phone, fax, Internet, e-mail, among others), workspace and other business processes after a disaster. DR planning includes data back-up and recovery solutions. DR planning is a needed process for any business or organization.
Furthermore, in many industries regulatory requirements exist for data back-up and recovery. In particular, in the banking and brokerage industries the SEC has introduced remote off-site data replication requirements and data recovery time limits. The US Department of Health and Human Services enacted the Health Insurance and Portability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) that mandates data availability requirements to ensure that information is available at all times. Associated with data loss are also security related threads and violations of personal financial or sensitive government or business data.
Understanding the need for disaster recovery is only the first step in the process. Equally important is determining the right data back-up and recovery strategy for a business. Many of the disaster recovery solutions are expensive, require specific technical expertise and dedicated technical personnel and equipment, are technologically complicated to implement, and in some cases time consuming and disruptive to the business information technology (IT) infrastructure and services.
Developing and selecting an appropriate and cost effective disaster recovery solution is a time consuming and complicated process. Accordingly, there is a need for a method that balances the risk and cost associated with data loss with the effectiveness and cost of the proposed disaster recovery solution.